Palin and Rape Kits: Debunking the Rumor

Charlie Martin published an article on The American Thinker's web site October 16 taking issue with the charge that Wasilla, Alaska, with Sarah Palin as mayor, charged rape victims for the cost of rape kits and forensic exams. Below are excerpts from Martin's article, with embedded links throughout.

"I suppose, at some point in this campaign, there won't be anything that surprises me any longer. I thought I was already there, but then a Sarah Palin rumor that has been thoroughly debunked shows up in an Op-Ed at the New York Times, and an editorial in the Boston Globe." Now, I think it only fair to mention to that the New York Times editorial appeared on September 25, so that was a few weeks ago, and the Boston Globe editorial appeared on October 1, more recently, but still a couple of weeks ago.

"The original rumor was first fronted in a left-wing blog Stop All Monsters, and then popularized in Americablog, based on a story in in May of 2000 in The Frontiersman, the local paper for the area around Wasilla. It appeared almost instantly in Daily Kos, Feministing, and other left-wing blogs. It was then picked up in a USA Today news story on September 11th."

Martin provided a quote from the original story. That quote went as follows: "While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests....In the past we've charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible. I just don't want to see any more burden put on the taxpayer," Fannon said. (Note punctuation added: the online version of the story has lost quotation marks and apostrophes.)" Nowhere in here is it mentioned that the VICTIMS are being charged.

Martin goes on: "Fannon isn't talking to the press any longer, but plenty of other people are, particularly people associated with the Obama campaign in Alaska. For example, Tony Knowles: "There was one town in Alaska that was charging victims for this, and that was Wasilla." (Palin defeated Knowles to become Governor.)

So what's being said about Palin appears to be false. "Or," as Martin writes, "at least no one can seem to find any support for them." He then cites some folks who did a bit of "digging" on their own. Martin says, "Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee did considerable digging, and found that no onecan find any records of any rape victims being billed. He did obtain records of rape kits being paid for my Wasilla, although only in the interval between when Knowles signed the bill and when it went into effect. Jim Geraghty at National Review Online looked into the actual records of the hearings involved, and discovered some interesting things as well. First, no one actually mentioned Wasilla as an issue -- the one example that was mentioned was a woman in Juneau. (Juneau is nowhere near Wasilla.)"

Next, Martin writes, "...during the debate of the bill, Del Smith, deputy commissioner at the Department of Public Safety, testified that 'the department might have been billed, but he has not found any police agency that has ever billed a victim.'" And finally, Martin says, "...if anyone was charged, it would have been done directly by the hospitals." By the hospitals. Not the government. Kind of important, don't you think?

And the practice of trying to recoup costs for rape kits and forensic exams is not limited to Alaska. As Martin notes, "It's been the policy to attempt to charge insurance companies in, for example, Illinois, Missouri, and North Carolina (Missouri and North Carolina just passed laws changing that, in 2007 and 2008 respectively.)"

And, Martin says, "It's not as if this hasn't been reported. Beyond the rumors list, and Geraghty's and Owens's work, the facts have been reported in places as various as The Boston Herald and Slate."

Yet the rumor persists.